Shinji Mikami has signaled his intent to return to the video game industry.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, he sent this tweet a few hours ago:
“Now that I’ve broken the spell of non-competition on myself, I guess I should get to work.”
Shinji is of course alluding to the noncompete clause that didn’t allow him to immediately find work at another game company. Since Shinji was interested to keep working on video games, he opted to just quietly take a vacation of sorts this whole time.
Shinji Mikami, of course, is one of the great producers from Capcom, and also tallied time in PlatinumGames and Tango Gameworks. He is best known for working on Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, God Hand, Vanquish, and most recently, The Evil Within.
In between those games were a wide variety of interesting titles, including Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Goof Troop, and Steel Battalion. Aside from his own prodigious gameography, however, Shinji Mikami was also known to be a frequent collaborator and mentor to other game designers.
Shinji helped found Clover Studio within Capcom, and then later, was involved in founding PlatinumGames, and Tango Gameworks after that. In the case of both PlatinumGames and Tango Gameworks, Shinji would not stick around for either company after making games with both teams.
In his current capacity, anyway, Shinji doesn’t have to start a new studio again or gain full employment. One of his potential future projects would be another collaboration with Goichi Suda, more popularly known as Suda51.
Shinji Mikami and Suda51 worked together on Killer7, and then later on Shadows of the Damned. While Shinji has yet to comment on it, Suda51 has expressed an interest in working with him again, in particular to make a new Shadows of the Damned game.
For all we know, Shinji may have sat out his non-compete and is already working with Suda51 now. But at least at the moment, neither party have announced anything.
Interestingly enough, Suda51 and his studio, Grasshopper Manufacture, is currently working on a remake of Shadows of the Damned. It’s just way too perfect timing that Shinji happened to have already left Tango Gameworks, the game is seeing a revival, and Suda51 is interested in a collaboration.
With all that said, one can’t discount the possibility that Shinji has other projects in line, or has already been hired somewhere else. Whatever Shinji does next, his fans are sure to follow.
